My guess is that it's a representation of a [Valyrian sphinx](https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Sphinx) and a reference to the theories that Valyrians used blood magic and monstrous cross-breeding to LITERALLY give themselves the blood of the dragon -- possibly why they can control them while other people can't.
And the images to the left appear to be Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa
Hmm, the tapestry have also displayed cross species sexual acts. And then with the rumors of nettles being removed, maybe they don't want to cast any doubt on Targaryen/valyrian control over dragons.
But I've also heard some rumors that ulf will have faked his heritage (his back story doesn't sound credible for the previous episode tbh) and that Daeron will be a bastard but somehow still have a dragon. Which is a little contradictory
I do think that Ulf was lying about his parentage, but him not being Baelon's son doesn't mean he isn't the son of another Targaryen or another dragonseed, that is the reason he can interact with dragons.
As for Daeron, him being a bastard is 99% a fake rumor, there is no way the Greens would be able to pull it off with a son of Alicent without Targaryen features.
Imagine if this is why Littlefinger wants the tapestries. He was intending to trade it to Euron (who wants knowledge of the ritual), in exchange for him leaving him and his child bride largely alone at the Eyrie in future.
Sansa marries Harry, Harry dies, Sansa remarries LF. With a huge amount of food and the seas cut off, he attains a high seat, fertile high end bride to gain the Northern loyalty over Bolton, lots of money since they have the food as well as local security. He basically gets 2 kingdoms, makes everyone think they're actually allies.
He's just going to misunderstand that Sansa just isn't into him and Euron isn't going act rationally. Or Catelyn will kill LF when he tries to marry Sansa and she'll die in the crossfire, causing Cat to sacrifice herself. I think Sansa will then end up with Euron when the deal goes south, being an ice (Stark) bride with flame red hair revived with fire magic. We get a mirror of her and Jon, except she isn't saved because she doesn't have a wolf to keep her mind and soul safe.
Checkout this video of David Lightbringer about Daemon's song in season 1 [https://youtu.be/ekO9Epwe-A4](https://youtu.be/ekO9Epwe-A4), I think you'll like it, he later talked about that topic again after the new HotD intro [https://youtu.be/qYuQHbmtLB0](https://youtu.be/qYuQHbmtLB0)
I watched the video, but David doesn't clarify whats exactly going on in the tapestry. He mentions blood magic, sphinxes and human sacrifice. Explain like I'm 5 please.
From what I understand:
-Ritual where family member is scarified. (Unknown how exactly this is done)
-Soul of family member merges with soul of dragon (the sphinx in the tapestry is symbolic). They don’t literally become the dragon but the soul is apart of the animal like a shadow.
-People who share a blood tie to the person who was sacrificed have a chance to bond with that dragon and any of that dragon’s descendants.
- A Valyrian family might have their own dragons but will not be able to mount the dragons of another family unless there is some blood tie.
The dragon must have three heads: The Rider, The Animal, The Ancestor.
It also explains why Valyrian dragonlords practiced incest-they didn't want other dragonlord families having the ability to bond with the family dragons.
oh, good luck on your video. I think Alt Shift X has mentioned a theory like this once or twice. Might want to look at his older stuff (maybe it was the Doom of Valyria one??? idk)
Lots of other people who don’t have Valyrian blood have ridden dragons. Great empire of the dawn seem to be the first. With the most recent being nettles.
That's a Valyrian Sphinx, which is a dragon with a human face. They existed in Valyria. They are mentioned a few times in the main story, mainly as statues of them are all over the place, such as two outside the small council chamber. They aren't really elaborated on in the published books, but in an early draft of AFFC found at the Cushing library they are mentioned to have really existed before the fall of Valyria. I would hypothesize they are part human part dragon, created through blood magic, and their dna was spliced back into dragonrider bloodlines to give them the "blood of the dragon", which allows a person to magically bond with a dragon.
I would further theorize (though this part is much more speculative) that the white wyrms with human hands that came out of Aerea were a stage of the Sphinx life cycle, as they were adapting parts of her DNA, hence the human hands.
In this image I would guess the woman is partaking in some sort of ritual to merge the sphinx's blood with hers, or maybe creating it in the first place, or maybe just worshipping it. It's unclear, but her arms look weird like she might be holding something? Though that could just be wrappings around her left forearm.
This is my favorite answer, good theories. The notion of a human face on a dragon is pretty horrifying and right up George’s alley, love it.
Perhaps the woman on the left is offering her baby in some fashion.
This is random, but I always felt like GRRM had a lot to do with Rykard’s story in Elden Ring. The insatiable thirst for power leading a once respected man to go under an ancient Volcano and offer himself for consumption to a forgotten but ever-living serpent god.
I’m totally off the deep end with this speculation but some kind similar sacrifice to these Sphinxes, Wyrms, or some other ancient creature would be a cool idea for some of the long forgotten blood magic Valyria used
I strongly suspect GRRM had much less to do with Elden Ring than people think. I suspect it was just a family tree, some names, the Erdtree, and maybe a few other ideas. But Elden Ring seems way more similar to Dark Souls than anything GRRM has ever written. It just is not his style.
George wrote the backstory and origins, basically everything that came before the start of the game. He also gave notes on all the villains and enemies
According to Miyazaki, George wrote the lore for everything up to and including the Shattering, and FromSoftware wrote everything after. However, the company is free to represent the lore GRRM wrote however they want. For example, were the Two Fingers that George wrote a humanoid race that just were *called* Two Fingers in his vision but FromSoft decided to make them look literally like fingers, or were they envisioned just as they are in the game? We don't know. He almost certainly also gave them the direction to look at alchemy for inspiration, which probably ended up informing some monster/character designs but not directly.
I'm pretty sure they gave George some metrics to make it soulslike, such as adding some reason why things in the world can't really die, or a Gwyn-type great leader (which George also has in figures like the Grey King, Garth the Green, or even Aegon the Conqueror), etc. But his work includes things such as Marika's backstory in TSotE, the backstory of the demigods, or the Night of the Black Knives, which are very much George's handiwork and in-line with the themes he writes. But stuff like Radahn and Malenia's battle in Caelid, or a certain someone trying to ascend to godhood, or Ranni's questline, are written by FromSoft.
It does look like the woman is in a reverencial/offering stance, like she is offering a child to the sphinx.
Love your connection to the worms, I hadn’t made that connection and I think its equal parts awesome and horrific.
It looks like blood is coming from the sphinx so perhaps if what is in the woman's hands is a baby.....Maybe they are "blessing" the child with the magic Targ gene stuff that bonds them with dragons.
Thanks. I thought it was a baby at first too, but then I thought it looked way too small, but maybe?
With Aerea I think it has to be something like that, maybe a sepaeate human-wyrm hybrid species, but the human hands on the wyrms is just way too weird and random otherwise.
Those are regular sphinxes, like in Oldtown. Valyrian Sphinxes are different, they're described in a couple places, like I think by Tyrion when he's travelling with Illyrio.
At first glance, one would say its a Valyrian sphinx.
Depicted here is the creation of a dragon bond: The woman is being sacrificed so that her soul enters the dragon to create a bond with the dragon - so that the woman and her descendants/family can bond with the dragon and its descendants. Explains the incest, to keep the concentration of the dragon blood high and to keep dragons out of the reach of someone not related to them.
what if the forging of light bringer was really the sacrifice of nissa nissa to forge the dragon bond? cause that looks like nissa nissa and azor ahai on the left
It's turned towards the camera and up a bit. It's a man with silver hair and a beard, the eyes are closed black slits. The two protrusions are like horns, and the red splotch is behind his right cheek. It's hard to explain, but once you see it it'll seem really obvious.
It's definitely not the clearest, but I think that's deliberate (art style + the way it's framed). For me the part that makes me 'recognize' it as a face is the hair - the rest falls into place around it, but it's *just* vague/blurred enough on the rest of it that I can get that 'wrong' feeling
In the Alt Shift X video he says he think it’s alluding to the hints in the books that ancient Valyrians were heavy into all sorts of blood magic, tried to breed humans with dragons and may have used some sort of blood sacrifice to create dragons by breeding some other type of wizard.
The most popular theory at the moment is that it represents the sacrifice of a Targaryen woman to create a blood bond between her offspring and the dragon.
While I like the theory, this has nothing to do with what we see in the image.
In the tapestry it is the other way around. The one that seems to be sacrificed is the dragon and in the second image the woman still alive seems to be receiving its blood. The man has his bloody knife and deposits the blood in a bowl, but the woman is still alive.
If it shows a blood sacrafice of the woman, wouldn't the woman be in the centre of the picture?
It remainds me more of Vhagar, in the middle, getting attacked by Caraxes, the red blob above it. Would be like described in Fire and Blood. Maybe the woman is Alys Rivers. At keast thats my first impression.
Is the name of Daemons dragon Caraxes?
So, I know the pervailing theory for most people is that this is something to do with Valyrian sphinxes and the possible blood magic done at the Anogrion to create dragons, or dragon-human hybrids, or whatever else they might have been cooking up.
And I do agree that this is a very compelling interpretation which I'm inclined to believe.
Just to offer a potential alternative explanation, though; Could it not represent the destruction of the Empire of Ghiscar?
I suppose the Ghiscari harpy isn't typically depicted with a tail, and would usually have more of a humanoid upper torso, but I feel like the head depicted here matches the harpy statues as shown in GOT quite closely. And a harpy with burning wings beneath the silhouette of Old Valyria would make sense as a portrayal of Old Ghis being destroyed during the rise of the Freehold.
Lol, reading everything else here I am *so* far off.
I thought it was Sunfyre burning and falling to the ground while Rhaenys and Meleys "The Red Queen" were flying past them. Basically, it's a foreshadow of Rook's Rest.
I like y'alls theories way more. I need to go to sleep.
I doubt anyone will see this, but I haven’t seen it mentioned. Those could be Valyrian dragon glass (obsidian) candles scattered around. They function sort of like palantirs from LotR and are mentioned numerous times in the Citadel/Old Town chapters of Dance With Dragons
If anyone is interested, I published the video where I break down the intro and quote two of the redditors who replied to this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WczV6wT3mfg
The dragon looks like it has wings of fire, as if its wings are being freshly created through magic.
There's a theory that dragons were created by the Valyrians from a species that didn't originally have wings.
Maybe they're using blood magic to give wings to the first dragon?
That's a Valyrian blood marriage, which Daemon and Rheanyrha attempted to emulate during their own marriage ceremony when they cut their lips and kissed around a fire.
Note: it appears that both the woman AND the sphinx appears to be bleeding, so "sacrifice to the sphinx/dragon" is only part of the story.
I'm not saying that Valyrians didn't force their slaves to copulate with animals for fun and profit: but the creation of dragons involved blood marriages more than sex.
I had this whole theory on Reddit on how the Targeryan motto "Fire and Blood" literally sets out the main tools for the binding and shaping of souls and that the shape of the soul strongly influences the shape of a creature's body.
If I had to guess, we see seeing the theory of Valyrian blood magic and crossbreedong species play out here. I know people have speculated Azor Ahai/Nissa Nissa but I offer an alternative idea. One of the bigger theories involving Dany is her and her family being descended from the Great Empire of the Dawn. So here we are seeing the Amethyst Empress (or a figure that inspired the legend) doing a magical ritual with the beast and her brother the Bloodstone Emperor, killing her to usurp her throne. This is called the Blood betrayal and is said to have caused the Long Night, which ended the Empire of the Dawn.
This makes me think of all the great disasters that involve magic on the series and how it can have permanent effects. So perhaps the Blood Betrayal saw the Emperor kill his sister to take the magic the ritual was supposed to give. A unintended disaster happened, thr Emperor had kids that passed down the magic to Daenys the dreamer who we see after this. (Interesting how they use blood and bits if gold to depict the magic)
EDIT Rewatchinf the scene shows she has nothing in her hands but interestingly the man behind her has something in his other hand which looks like a white bowl.....made me think of weirwood paste.
To the left there’s a woman being stabbed by a sword and flames coming out of a bowl. Plus there’s the dragon with a human face on it next to it.
Could be a sphinx, could be Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa creating dragons
BLOOD MAGIC!!!
Earlier, when Targaryens were peasants at Old Valariya, they bonded themselves with dragons through Blood Magic
That's the reason why some of the Targaryen babies when born, were like dragons, had wings, like Rhaenyra's child who died during child birth in the 1st season
And maybe they sodomized too, with the dragons, maybe that's why they say they are the blood of dragon
In the image, there's an entity who's head is of a girl and rest of the body is of a dragon
I know, the Targaryens are pretty fucked up...
This is skin changing taken to whole new level, remember the azor ahai myth? Nissa nissa *soul went into the sword lightbringer* .
so a valyrian can ride a dragon far easier because his great grandpa recognizes him from within the dragon.
Perhaps the azor myth is actually the tale of the great empire of the dawn creating a superweapon again the others.
My guess is that it's a representation of a [Valyrian sphinx](https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Sphinx) and a reference to the theories that Valyrians used blood magic and monstrous cross-breeding to LITERALLY give themselves the blood of the dragon -- possibly why they can control them while other people can't. And the images to the left appear to be Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa
Hmm, the tapestry have also displayed cross species sexual acts. And then with the rumors of nettles being removed, maybe they don't want to cast any doubt on Targaryen/valyrian control over dragons. But I've also heard some rumors that ulf will have faked his heritage (his back story doesn't sound credible for the previous episode tbh) and that Daeron will be a bastard but somehow still have a dragon. Which is a little contradictory
I do think that Ulf was lying about his parentage, but him not being Baelon's son doesn't mean he isn't the son of another Targaryen or another dragonseed, that is the reason he can interact with dragons. As for Daeron, him being a bastard is 99% a fake rumor, there is no way the Greens would be able to pull it off with a son of Alicent without Targaryen features.
Imagine if this is why Littlefinger wants the tapestries. He was intending to trade it to Euron (who wants knowledge of the ritual), in exchange for him leaving him and his child bride largely alone at the Eyrie in future. Sansa marries Harry, Harry dies, Sansa remarries LF. With a huge amount of food and the seas cut off, he attains a high seat, fertile high end bride to gain the Northern loyalty over Bolton, lots of money since they have the food as well as local security. He basically gets 2 kingdoms, makes everyone think they're actually allies. He's just going to misunderstand that Sansa just isn't into him and Euron isn't going act rationally. Or Catelyn will kill LF when he tries to marry Sansa and she'll die in the crossfire, causing Cat to sacrifice herself. I think Sansa will then end up with Euron when the deal goes south, being an ice (Stark) bride with flame red hair revived with fire magic. We get a mirror of her and Jon, except she isn't saved because she doesn't have a wolf to keep her mind and soul safe.
Omg THIS, I absolutely love this theory. You are 100% correct, I will steal your theory and give you credit in this video I'm making !
Checkout this video of David Lightbringer about Daemon's song in season 1 [https://youtu.be/ekO9Epwe-A4](https://youtu.be/ekO9Epwe-A4), I think you'll like it, he later talked about that topic again after the new HotD intro [https://youtu.be/qYuQHbmtLB0](https://youtu.be/qYuQHbmtLB0)
I watched the video, but David doesn't clarify whats exactly going on in the tapestry. He mentions blood magic, sphinxes and human sacrifice. Explain like I'm 5 please.
From what I understand: -Ritual where family member is scarified. (Unknown how exactly this is done) -Soul of family member merges with soul of dragon (the sphinx in the tapestry is symbolic). They don’t literally become the dragon but the soul is apart of the animal like a shadow. -People who share a blood tie to the person who was sacrificed have a chance to bond with that dragon and any of that dragon’s descendants. - A Valyrian family might have their own dragons but will not be able to mount the dragons of another family unless there is some blood tie. The dragon must have three heads: The Rider, The Animal, The Ancestor.
It also explains why Valyrian dragonlords practiced incest-they didn't want other dragonlord families having the ability to bond with the family dragons.
oh, good luck on your video. I think Alt Shift X has mentioned a theory like this once or twice. Might want to look at his older stuff (maybe it was the Doom of Valyria one??? idk)
Lots of other people who don’t have Valyrian blood have ridden dragons. Great empire of the dawn seem to be the first. With the most recent being nettles.
Nettles is said to have been dragonseed. I don't think there's an actual instance of a non-Valyrian riding a dragon.
Aegon_Handwiper, as promised, you feature heavily in my video which I just published: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WczV6wT3mfg
That's a Valyrian Sphinx, which is a dragon with a human face. They existed in Valyria. They are mentioned a few times in the main story, mainly as statues of them are all over the place, such as two outside the small council chamber. They aren't really elaborated on in the published books, but in an early draft of AFFC found at the Cushing library they are mentioned to have really existed before the fall of Valyria. I would hypothesize they are part human part dragon, created through blood magic, and their dna was spliced back into dragonrider bloodlines to give them the "blood of the dragon", which allows a person to magically bond with a dragon. I would further theorize (though this part is much more speculative) that the white wyrms with human hands that came out of Aerea were a stage of the Sphinx life cycle, as they were adapting parts of her DNA, hence the human hands. In this image I would guess the woman is partaking in some sort of ritual to merge the sphinx's blood with hers, or maybe creating it in the first place, or maybe just worshipping it. It's unclear, but her arms look weird like she might be holding something? Though that could just be wrappings around her left forearm.
This is my favorite answer, good theories. The notion of a human face on a dragon is pretty horrifying and right up George’s alley, love it. Perhaps the woman on the left is offering her baby in some fashion. This is random, but I always felt like GRRM had a lot to do with Rykard’s story in Elden Ring. The insatiable thirst for power leading a once respected man to go under an ancient Volcano and offer himself for consumption to a forgotten but ever-living serpent god. I’m totally off the deep end with this speculation but some kind similar sacrifice to these Sphinxes, Wyrms, or some other ancient creature would be a cool idea for some of the long forgotten blood magic Valyria used
I strongly suspect GRRM had much less to do with Elden Ring than people think. I suspect it was just a family tree, some names, the Erdtree, and maybe a few other ideas. But Elden Ring seems way more similar to Dark Souls than anything GRRM has ever written. It just is not his style.
George wrote the backstory and origins, basically everything that came before the start of the game. He also gave notes on all the villains and enemies
He talked a bit about it before. From how he worded it, he largely came up with some of the history of it.
According to Miyazaki, George wrote the lore for everything up to and including the Shattering, and FromSoftware wrote everything after. However, the company is free to represent the lore GRRM wrote however they want. For example, were the Two Fingers that George wrote a humanoid race that just were *called* Two Fingers in his vision but FromSoft decided to make them look literally like fingers, or were they envisioned just as they are in the game? We don't know. He almost certainly also gave them the direction to look at alchemy for inspiration, which probably ended up informing some monster/character designs but not directly. I'm pretty sure they gave George some metrics to make it soulslike, such as adding some reason why things in the world can't really die, or a Gwyn-type great leader (which George also has in figures like the Grey King, Garth the Green, or even Aegon the Conqueror), etc. But his work includes things such as Marika's backstory in TSotE, the backstory of the demigods, or the Night of the Black Knives, which are very much George's handiwork and in-line with the themes he writes. But stuff like Radahn and Malenia's battle in Caelid, or a certain someone trying to ascend to godhood, or Ranni's questline, are written by FromSoft.
You mean the women kneeling to the left? That's Azhor Ahai and Nissa Nissa
It does look like the woman is in a reverencial/offering stance, like she is offering a child to the sphinx. Love your connection to the worms, I hadn’t made that connection and I think its equal parts awesome and horrific.
It looks like blood is coming from the sphinx so perhaps if what is in the woman's hands is a baby.....Maybe they are "blessing" the child with the magic Targ gene stuff that bonds them with dragons.
Thanks. I thought it was a baby at first too, but then I thought it looked way too small, but maybe? With Aerea I think it has to be something like that, maybe a sepaeate human-wyrm hybrid species, but the human hands on the wyrms is just way too weird and random otherwise.
but arent the sphinxes with human faces but with lion bodies and snake tails? instead of dragon bodies?
Those are regular sphinxes, like in Oldtown. Valyrian Sphinxes are different, they're described in a couple places, like I think by Tyrion when he's travelling with Illyrio.
WOW THANK YOU ! Amazing answer, love it, will steal your theory and give you credit in this video I'm making.
Mersault26, as promised, you appear in my video which I just published: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WczV6wT3mfg
At first glance, one would say its a Valyrian sphinx. Depicted here is the creation of a dragon bond: The woman is being sacrificed so that her soul enters the dragon to create a bond with the dragon - so that the woman and her descendants/family can bond with the dragon and its descendants. Explains the incest, to keep the concentration of the dragon blood high and to keep dragons out of the reach of someone not related to them.
what if the forging of light bringer was really the sacrifice of nissa nissa to forge the dragon bond? cause that looks like nissa nissa and azor ahai on the left
I buy into the blood magic ritual theory as Alt Shift X says, but I can't for the life of me see the human face on the dragon's head
It's turned towards the camera and up a bit. It's a man with silver hair and a beard, the eyes are closed black slits. The two protrusions are like horns, and the red splotch is behind his right cheek. It's hard to explain, but once you see it it'll seem really obvious.
Oh yes I see it! Very good, thanks!
Here's it rotated a bit, maybe it makes it clearer? https://imgur.com/fDHxHz7
It's just so weird, I can't make out the facial features, it's so unclear. The eyes and the nose seem so wrong
Think about the mirror from Shrek and you will notice it
It's definitely not the clearest, but I think that's deliberate (art style + the way it's framed). For me the part that makes me 'recognize' it as a face is the hair - the rest falls into place around it, but it's *just* vague/blurred enough on the rest of it that I can get that 'wrong' feeling
Oh yes I see it! THANKS!
In the Alt Shift X video he says he think it’s alluding to the hints in the books that ancient Valyrians were heavy into all sorts of blood magic, tried to breed humans with dragons and may have used some sort of blood sacrifice to create dragons by breeding some other type of wizard.
The most popular theory at the moment is that it represents the sacrifice of a Targaryen woman to create a blood bond between her offspring and the dragon. While I like the theory, this has nothing to do with what we see in the image. In the tapestry it is the other way around. The one that seems to be sacrificed is the dragon and in the second image the woman still alive seems to be receiving its blood. The man has his bloody knife and deposits the blood in a bowl, but the woman is still alive.
Have you heard of lemur theory?
If it shows a blood sacrafice of the woman, wouldn't the woman be in the centre of the picture? It remainds me more of Vhagar, in the middle, getting attacked by Caraxes, the red blob above it. Would be like described in Fire and Blood. Maybe the woman is Alys Rivers. At keast thats my first impression. Is the name of Daemons dragon Caraxes?
Doom of Valyria. Dragons all exploding, cities swept away. All the lava… not a lot of lava… All. The lava…
So, I know the pervailing theory for most people is that this is something to do with Valyrian sphinxes and the possible blood magic done at the Anogrion to create dragons, or dragon-human hybrids, or whatever else they might have been cooking up. And I do agree that this is a very compelling interpretation which I'm inclined to believe. Just to offer a potential alternative explanation, though; Could it not represent the destruction of the Empire of Ghiscar? I suppose the Ghiscari harpy isn't typically depicted with a tail, and would usually have more of a humanoid upper torso, but I feel like the head depicted here matches the harpy statues as shown in GOT quite closely. And a harpy with burning wings beneath the silhouette of Old Valyria would make sense as a portrayal of Old Ghis being destroyed during the rise of the Freehold.
Can anyone like outline the human face ? I cannot see it I’ve tried so hard
Lol, reading everything else here I am *so* far off. I thought it was Sunfyre burning and falling to the ground while Rhaenys and Meleys "The Red Queen" were flying past them. Basically, it's a foreshadow of Rook's Rest. I like y'alls theories way more. I need to go to sleep.
Lookin' like a dang ol' Gigantamax Charizard I tell you hwat, man
I doubt anyone will see this, but I haven’t seen it mentioned. Those could be Valyrian dragon glass (obsidian) candles scattered around. They function sort of like palantirs from LotR and are mentioned numerous times in the Citadel/Old Town chapters of Dance With Dragons
Oh wow that sounds great, too bad I already published my video or I'd have totally included it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WczV6wT3mfg
Looks a bit like it is being stabbed by a spear with a fiery burst coming from it, reminds me of the Martell sigil.
Targeryans like 3 things: Dragons, Fire, Blood
Notice the glass candles
Vhagar, Meleys and Sunfyre. 👀
If anyone is interested, I published the video where I break down the intro and quote two of the redditors who replied to this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WczV6wT3mfg
The dragon looks like it has wings of fire, as if its wings are being freshly created through magic. There's a theory that dragons were created by the Valyrians from a species that didn't originally have wings. Maybe they're using blood magic to give wings to the first dragon?
That's a Valyrian blood marriage, which Daemon and Rheanyrha attempted to emulate during their own marriage ceremony when they cut their lips and kissed around a fire. Note: it appears that both the woman AND the sphinx appears to be bleeding, so "sacrifice to the sphinx/dragon" is only part of the story. I'm not saying that Valyrians didn't force their slaves to copulate with animals for fun and profit: but the creation of dragons involved blood marriages more than sex. I had this whole theory on Reddit on how the Targeryan motto "Fire and Blood" literally sets out the main tools for the binding and shaping of souls and that the shape of the soul strongly influences the shape of a creature's body.
The creation of Dragons by fusion Wyvern, fire warms, and human DNA by using blood magic.
Alt Shift X explains it at the end of the episode one analysis. Worth a watch.
If I had to guess, we see seeing the theory of Valyrian blood magic and crossbreedong species play out here. I know people have speculated Azor Ahai/Nissa Nissa but I offer an alternative idea. One of the bigger theories involving Dany is her and her family being descended from the Great Empire of the Dawn. So here we are seeing the Amethyst Empress (or a figure that inspired the legend) doing a magical ritual with the beast and her brother the Bloodstone Emperor, killing her to usurp her throne. This is called the Blood betrayal and is said to have caused the Long Night, which ended the Empire of the Dawn. This makes me think of all the great disasters that involve magic on the series and how it can have permanent effects. So perhaps the Blood Betrayal saw the Emperor kill his sister to take the magic the ritual was supposed to give. A unintended disaster happened, thr Emperor had kids that passed down the magic to Daenys the dreamer who we see after this. (Interesting how they use blood and bits if gold to depict the magic) EDIT Rewatchinf the scene shows she has nothing in her hands but interestingly the man behind her has something in his other hand which looks like a white bowl.....made me think of weirwood paste.
To the left there’s a woman being stabbed by a sword and flames coming out of a bowl. Plus there’s the dragon with a human face on it next to it. Could be a sphinx, could be Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa creating dragons
BLOOD MAGIC!!! Earlier, when Targaryens were peasants at Old Valariya, they bonded themselves with dragons through Blood Magic That's the reason why some of the Targaryen babies when born, were like dragons, had wings, like Rhaenyra's child who died during child birth in the 1st season And maybe they sodomized too, with the dragons, maybe that's why they say they are the blood of dragon In the image, there's an entity who's head is of a girl and rest of the body is of a dragon I know, the Targaryens are pretty fucked up...
[check out this video by Crowfood’s Daugther/Disputed Lands.](https://youtu.be/W5Ae4yvEHrE?si=kkZWRk5FhBD9RyeZ)
This is skin changing taken to whole new level, remember the azor ahai myth? Nissa nissa *soul went into the sword lightbringer* . so a valyrian can ride a dragon far easier because his great grandpa recognizes him from within the dragon. Perhaps the azor myth is actually the tale of the great empire of the dawn creating a superweapon again the others.
Read the Book!
Is mid quality drawing of dragon if I had to guess, maybe accidentally set wing fire